Andrew Friedman leaving the Rays for the Dodgers is rough on Tampa Bay, but I’m fascinated with the situation as an experiment/test case. What happens when you take someone who thrived running a team with $50 million and give him $250 million?
Of course, Friedman won’t exactly have a clean slate waiting for him in Los Angeles.
In fact, the Dodgers’ future payroll commitments are pretty crazy. They already have $190 million in guaranteed salaries for 2015, plus $170 million for both 2016 and 2017. They even have $130 million committed for 2018.
Their payroll this season was an MLB-high $240 million, but the Dodgers’ incredibly lucrative television contract suggests that will just keep rising and rising. In other words: Friedman is coming to a team that has a ridiculous amount of money already tied up many years into the future, but he still might have a ton of money to sling around.
This has the potential to be very interesting. And very scary for the rest of the NL West.
